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Is there really a Pest Control Season?

Posted by North American Home Services on May 22, 2013 in Pest Control | 0 comments

Short answer is yes. The longer answer would be that it depends on the season you are talking about and how the previous season looked. Traditionally spring is the start of pest season. Just like the blooming of the flowers or the budding of blossoms on the trees, pests begin to hatch. Ants, earwigs, silverfish, roaches, crickets and gnats will invade your yards and homes. However, this isn’t the only “season” in our industry.

Yellow Jackets and wasps are more active in the fall while mice and rats are very active during the winter months. Yellow Jackets are distinguished by their signature black and yellow striping. Also known as meat bees, they are abnormally attracted to sweets during the fall months and are very aggressive. The most common wasp during the fall is the paper wasp. The honeycomb type nests you see under your eaves are the first sign of a problem. Although these wasps are very docile compared to yellow jackets they will sting to protect their nests.

Nesting is a common theme during the winter when little four legged creatures move into your home, sheds and play structures. Winter is most definitely rodent season. These little guys are looking for warmth and food and if they can find both it is very hard to get them to leave. Rats can fit through a hole the size of a quarter while mice can fit through a hole the size of a dime! Small bits of paper, scampering in the attic at night and chewed up seed shells are a sign of rodent activity.

Rodent activity also has unforeseen consequences. Take for instance the winter of 2010. If you remember, it was especially wet and warm. These conditions caused rodent breeding to go through the roof…pun intended! As a result, the snake population skyrocketed that spring. The snakes had more food, which caused them to breed more. We were averaging 3 snake calls a week for a few months!

So as you can see, pest season is year round. This is why at NAHS, we inform our potential customers that a pest control maintenance plan is the best value for them. We cover everything, no matter the season.

Your Computer and Pest Control

Posted by North American Home Services on May 20, 2013 in Pest Control | 0 comments

So, what does your computer and pest control have in common? Check out this article for some insight.

Forget viruses, look out for ants in your motherboard!
Travis Andrews | dvice.com | Sunday, May 19, 2013 – 2:56pm

Though this probably isn’t the first thing that occurs to you, next time your computer stops working unexpectedly, take a peek under the old hood to see if there’s an enormous, horrible nest of ants.

Because, according to researchers at the University of Texas at Austin, we’ve got a new type of ant on our hands, lovingly nicknamed the “Tawny Crazy Ants” and actually named Nylanderia fulva. Found in the southeastern United States, these crazy ants are displacing the horror-ridden fire ants.

For all practical purposes, this seems like a positive thing, considering the crazy ants don’t sting the way fire ants do. But it’s not a great thing for electronics.

“[The crazy ants] nest in electronics and create short circuits, as they create a contact bridge between two points when they get electrocuted they release an alarm pheromone,” said UT research assistant Edward LeBrun. That pheromone attracts more ants, who begin creating a larger nest inside the electronic in question.

There’s no explanation yet as to why they love electronics, other than the confined spaces. They’ll pretty much nest in anything, and they’re not susceptible to your everyday ant killer, making these guys a grade-A pain-in-the-bum.

Luckily for everyone who doesn’t live in the southeastern United States, they’re mostly confined to the southeastern United States.

Over time, though, our electronics may have a stronger enemy than viruses: ants. Maybe we can harvest them and offer the buggers to folks with digital ant farms before that happens.

Photo Credit: Joe MacGown/Mississippi Entomological Museum

Source: DVICE: Forget viruses, look out for ants in your motherboard!